Saturday, January 28, 2012

History of Chess on The Internet

Just for fun, I decided to compile the record of how I experienced Internet chess, your mileage will of course vary!

1998 – free internet chess club (FICS)allows to play games on the internet any time1999 – chess databases like on sites TWIC get updated on a regular basis and people can get access to them on a regular basis2000 – major tournaments are broadcast on ICC with thousands of people following and commenting on games2000 – chess portals like Kasparov Chess begin to publish regular articles2001 – online 4 and 5 piece Endgame TableBases such as Nalimov are accessible2001 – online chess lessons become as popular as the ones in person2004 – instructional chess videos begin to get published by companies like ChessBase on a large scale2005 – even non-major tournaments like Canadian Open get broadcast over the internet via DGT2006 – YouTube allows regular chess amateurs like myself to share their analysis with others2009 – commentators like Sergei Shipov switch to video format for sharing their analysis2010 – playing online chess on a mobile device such as IPhone becomes a viable option2010 – live chess ratings get updated on the nearly daily basis2011 – websites like whychess.org broadcast major chess events with live engine analysis 2011 – Live, multi hour HD full game broadcasts of events like World Cup are streamed live with up to date commentary2011 – Fritz 13 is released, allowing users to upload and share chess analysis via their online database2012 – What is coming ahead??